Warm up the ordinary people of North Korea, not the unyielding, self-absorbed elite
South Korean President Lee Jae-myung (Image credit/Bloomberg)
In Aesop’s The North Wind and the Sun, the two characters quarrel over who is stronger. A timely traveller, wrapped in a cloak, appears on the road and the challenge for the wind and the sun is to make him remove his cloak.
The wind blows with such force and intimidation that the traveller holds on even tighter to his cloak. The sun takes a different approach. Its radiant, gentle beams coax the cloak off.
The Sunshine Policy takes its name from this fable. Taken up by President Kim Dae-jung, Roh Moo-hyun and Moon Jae-in, this approach to North Korea features summitry, joint economic projects, and turning off the loudspeakers deployed along the Demilitarised Zone (DMZ), all with the intention of warming up the North Korean elite.
As newly elected President Lee Jae-myung’s North Korean policy takes shape, it seems to be following the path of his liberal predecessors.
Here’s what has happened since his inauguration.
The Unification Ministry started off with verbal condemnation of anti-North leaflet launches. This was a U-turn from the previous conservative administration, but in line with Lee’s election pledges.
Then the military cut off loudspeaker broadcasts. Pyongyang soon followed.
President Lee then explicitly ordered “preventative and punitive action” following further leaflet launches. The Unification Ministry met with other ministries and decided to send police to border regions. Two days later, police arrested six Americans for attempting to float plastic bottles filled with rice, dollar bills, and Bibles. Paju, a base for these humanitarian efforts, banned anti-North leaflet launches on 1 July.
Lee Jae-myung is by far the most powerful of Korea’s democratically elected presidents. His party wields a majority in the legislature. The martial law incident has dealt a destabilising blow to the legitimacy of the opposition People Power Party. Promising to be a president for all, Lee seems set on national unity rather than political vendettas.
His appointments hint at the direction of his North Korea policy. National security advisor Wi Sung-lak is an expert in Russian and North Korean affairs. The director of the intelligence service, Lee Jong-seok, is associated with the Sunshine Policy.
As hinted in Lee’s first press conference, we may see fresh political momentum injected into inter-Korean dialogue and economic cooperation.
In his previous presidential campaign, Lee called for solution-based, pragmatic, step-by-step engagement. Given his unprecedented power, campaign promises, and recent confidence-building measures, I am not confident that he will maintain this prudent stance. The Lee Jae-myung Sunshine Policy is coming to light.
But this is the wrong time for re-engagement with the North. Appeasing a brick wall at the cost of North Koreans’ inalienable right to information is the approach we cannot afford to take.
Consider the international environment. First, the US strikes on Iranian nuclear sites lock Kim Jong-un further into his nuclear program. Pyongyang is watching closely and taking notes. Iran’s fate (not to mention that of Libya, Iraq and Ukraine) takes denuclearisation off the table for the foreseeable future. The conflict confirms the necessity of a hardline stance to Kim. In Iran, he sees the consequence of willing reduction of nuclear capabilities. To him, his own program has never felt more essential.
American deterrence and “peace through strength” rhetoric are not good signals for Kim. They scare him back into his hermit kingdom. For this reason Lee Jae-myung’s overtures are likely to be met with silence, the same silence that former President Moon Jae-in saw towards his low-level humanitarian proposals in the second half of his presidency (COVID-19 pandemic support, video reunions of separated families).
Secondly, the current geopolitical climate is different from Trump 1.0. A lot has changed since the all-time high of the 2018 summits, and today’s President Trump complicates re-engagement with the North.
An obvious disclaimer to be noted: Trump is a wild card. He has taken outlandish, unthinkable foreign policy moves. Predicting Trump may be futile, and whatever expectations derived from these six months, we must prepare for something on another level.
Regardless, what can we tell? Marco Rubio, the US Secretary of State, recently made a last-minute cancellation on his South Korea visit. President Lee’s “close cooperation with the United States” seems to be way down the White House priority list.
Trump’s continued personal approach to engagement with North Korea is a blatant misreading of the current political environment. But if anything, we’re likely to see Trump attempt to resuscitate his bromance with Kim, holding steadfast towards charisma and persuasion as the solution. According to Trump at a 27 June Oval Office event, he has “a good relationship” with Kim and “get[s] along with him, really great”. But his beautiful letters don’t seem to be coming in this year. Kim has built up a stable rapport with Putin, and remembers the humiliation of diplomacy gone stale in 2019 in Hanoi. Kim looks set to give Trump the cold shoulder, and the American president will take it personally.
America First is back again, but much more pronounced. The rules-based international order has collapsed. Trump’s approach to Gaza and the Ukraine mineral deal mark the descent into power politics.
Political scientist and North Korea expert Victor Cha notes the possibility of Trump bringing American troops back home from South Korea, and fittingly, the South Korean public has brought back calls to nuclearise from the political fringe. Seeing Trump’s demand for NATO allies to increase their defence spending, there is no comfort in believing that the traditional US–South Korea alliance will endure.
All of this points to disengagement from the United States. It means a change in balance in Pyongyang’s cost-benefit analysis of engagement. It means fizzled-out enthusiasm and a sidelined South Korea. It means a brake on the political momentum to protect North Koreans from the most egregious abuses by the Kim regime.
North Korea has no intention of warming up to Lee Jae-myung’s efforts.
In an interview with Radio Free Asia’s Korean Service, a North Korean citizen reminds us to consider the situation on the ground. “People remember that former South Korean presidents like Kim Dae-jung and Moon Jae-in were friendly toward the North,” the interviewee said. “But their policies did nothing to improve the living standards of ordinary North Koreans.”
Let’s not lose sight of the ultimate aim of the Sunshine Policy. Let’s not get entangled in diplomatic gymnastics and photo-ops and conflate the means with the ends. North Korean people deserve much more than this circular, on-and-off engagement, and the only justifiable future of North Korea policy is one that empowers grassroots activism. Warm up the ordinary people of North Korea, not the unyielding, self-absorbed elite.
June Seo is a student from South Korea. Having first been introduced to the human rights field through the Oslo Freedom Forum and simulation activities of the United Nations, he studies international affairs with a particular interest in East Asia. Having spent his life taking open society and free education for granted, he hopes to dedicate his future to telling the stories of those less fortunate.
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